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But the Treasury — and, by extension, the White House — has tried to walk a careful line, keeping a close eye on the financial system without doing anything that could be interpreted as too heavy-handed or that might stymie the economic recovery.

At the hearing, Warren repeatedly returned to her question, never quite getting a clear explanation from Allison about what type of oversight of Citigroup Treasury has in place. “Citi does visit with us from time to time,” Allison said at one point.

But Pandit made clear that Treasury wasn’t getting any secret information about Citigroup’s inner workings, noting that securities laws prevent the U.S. government from getting access to any information that is not available to shareholders.

Other panel members were skeptical, too.

A bone of contention was whether Citigroup operates under an implicit government guarantee. Warren and other panel members insisted that it does and argued that the credit markets should treat Citigroup as though it were backed by a federal guarantee. But Allison and Pandit avoided confirming that. Allison said several times that the United States does not guarantee Citigroup’s debt.

“First of all, there is no too-big-to-fail guarantee,” Allison told Warren at one point.

Warren insisted that there is an implicit guarantee and asked whether U.S. taxpayers were getting paid for extending it to Citi.

“There is no guarantee of this institution or any institution,” Allison responded.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Warren said curtly.

She had tough questions for Pandit, too, saying Citigroup has become the “poster child for too-big-to-fail” and asking why Pandit didn’t simply break the big bank up into smaller parts that wouldn’t threaten the U.S. economy if they failed.

That, Pandit replied, is exactly what he is doing, by selling 40 percent of the company.

Readers' Comments (9)

I and a lot of other people, think that everybody involved in this coverup should be strung up by their thumbs for all to see. Obama must really think the American people are stupid. He plays off the whole financial meltdown as if it was caused by somebody else, when they gave him and his crooked cronies $700 freakin' million dollars to get them elected. Obama got the lion's share, but Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd were numbers two and three. By the way, the UAW gave them $450 million so their payoff was control of General Motors and Chrysler. There is an old proverb about Chicago Politics. a candidate that gets elected in Chicago, always serves two terms. The first term in office, the second term served in prison. America, we can do better than this. Midterm elections are 244 days away, so just keep the faith.

Anything that I own 27% of is going to have my input. It the government is abdocating my interests in Citi then a lot of people should be unemployed. How many of my tax dollars are being used to lobby against my interests? Treasury needs a large overhaul.

President Obama's proposed fee on the country's biggest banks receiving taxpayer bailout money would ultimately result in costs to the firms' customers, employees, and investors, a non-partisan Congressional watchdog said today.

In January the President unveiled a proposal to impose a fee on about 50 of the nation's biggest banks with assets of $50 billion or more in an effort to recoup around $90 billion of taxpayer money dished out as part of the Wall Street bailout.

Thank heavens our government is loaded with tax cheats, liars and bag men.

Congress has its hands full selling legislation. Rangel gets caught with his hand in the till and gets a reprimand then he has the nerve to take a leave of absence and Congress says nothing Dodd and Frank send contributions to the Ethics Committee and bankrupt the housing, banking and mortgage markets.

Nothing is said - nothing is done and they are allowed to continue and sell more pork

The Obama administration is not going to do anything tangible to take down or hamstring its crony companies. Big donations from these crony companies are needed for the reelection bid. But the show must go on.